1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains in general to data visualization on a computer and, in particular, to ways of representing data obtained from web pages and other sources.
2. Description of the Related Art
The World Wide Web and other information storage and retrieval systems contain a great deal of information. With the advent of search engines and other similar tools it has become relatively easy for a user to locate particular information. For example, one can obtain a wealth of information about World War II by simply searching for the phrase “World War II” on the Web.
Information on the web is not always in a format that is easy for the user to comprehend. A web site describing biographic information for a person might not present the information in a graphical manner. Some web sites, like sites providing stock prices and other financial information, provide limited graphing abilities. For example, a person can interact with such sites to create and manipulate graphs showing stock prices over time. Even on these sites, however, the person is restricted to a limited set of graphing options.
Moreover, the sites do not permit the user to graph and compare data from across different web sites. For example, there might be three different web sites respectively describing major US battles of WWII, WWII battles from 1939-1941, and Russian WWII battles. These sites contain related information and a user might find it beneficial to display information from all three sites in a single, easy to understand format.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a way to enable the user to organize and view ordered information from web pages in a way that makes it easier to comprehend.